15 Mar
2013
15 Mar
'13
7:54 a.m.
On Mar 15, 2013, at 8:55 AM, geneb <geneb at deltasoft.com> wrote:
On Thu, 14 Mar 2013, William Donzelli wrote:
I wouldn't mind getting my hands on one of those PC motherboards that had a tube amp
on the board for the sound output...
They were pretty gimmicky, actually. You can't get a whole lot
of gain out of a single 12AX7 (especially if you're using it
to amplify both channels, so you only get one triode per
channel), so essentially they were using the tube to distort
the sound. You'd probably get much better audio quality with
a high-end, low-noise 24-bit sound card running into a proper
tube preamp.
They were kinda cool, I guess, but I think the actual benefit
was much more along the lines of window dressing than actual
audio quality.
- Dave
Although
there were some low-voltage space-charge tubes for automotive use,
just about every auto radio that I've ever seen that uses those throws in
the towel and uses a good old power transistor for the final audio stage.
Yeah...that was the point.